Time to upgrade VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a great software application that enables you to run other operating systems on your computer. It enables you to run any version of Windows on a Linux PC or on your Apple Mac, or to run Linux on a Windows PC or a Mac. You can even run Windows on a Windows PC, such as Windows 7 on Vista or vice versa. It's perfect for running Windows software on your Linux PC or Mac, or for testing software before installing it on your Windows PC. A couple of weeks ago, version 3.2.0 of the software was released and it has some new features that make it worthwhile upgrading.

There are two very closely related versions of VirtualBox and one is open source and the other is from Oracle. Both are free, but of the two, the Oracle one is slightly better. It used to be a Sun project, but when Oracle bought Sun, it was renamed to Oracle VM VirtualBox.

Version 3.2.0 is available for Windows, Mac and various Linux distros, including the brand new Ubuntu 10.04.

The new features include support for the latest Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, better switching between the guest OS and host with 25% faster networking, new virtual disk subsystem with improved performance, remote video acceleration, up to eight virtual monitors, merging snapshots while the virtual machine is running, and more. You can even run OS X server in a virtual machine on a Mac.

If you've not tried it, take a look at this Mac article, this, this or this Linux article, or even this old article about Microsoft Virtual PC, which works in a similar way.